


tale as old as time (god stiles stop singing that fucking song already)

by Batty



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Awkwardness, Dating, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Misunderstandings, Ms Blake is a badass and don't you forget it, Multi, POV Female Character, Pack Bonding, Trust Issues, Unresolved Sexual Tension, as of 3x04, of the Hale variety, phooey, while your pack trails behind you and makes kissy noises
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:07:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batty/pseuds/Batty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After she’s attacked by rampaging moon-sick werewolves and saved by the most gorgeous man she’s ever seen, Jennifer Blake finds that her life has become one where her two best students are the school’s two worst, she’s given apparent sociopath and serial killer Peter Hale three weeks of detention, and she already has to explain to the janitor why there are curved gouges in the wood of her desk without mentioning the incredibly mind-blowing sex she’s just had on top of it. </p>
<p>--<br/>Quite suddenly, Jenny gets it. “This is about Derek.” He smiles thinly in agreement.</p>
<p>“My nephew hardly has the best track record with women,” Peter says dryly, his eyes roaming over her body like he was scanning for weapons, “Especially those with a teaching license.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i couldn't help myself sorry not sorry

Even long after she’s out from that dark boiler room, where she hadn't know whether to sob from relief at not being dead or choke up everything in her stomach from the sheer _stench_ of the blood, Jennifer finds that she can’t stop her hands from shaking.

Strange, seeing as how they had been _so_ steady before.

Jenny flushes suddenly, clenching the cup in her hand so hard she was surprised it didn’t break. So she had nearly been killed while finishing the last of the grading. And then been rescued by a bloody man that could probably model for GQ if he was so inclined. It’s not like she was suffering some sort of mental breakdown from all of this information, of course not. Oh god.

_Breath, Jenny, breath._

Shutting her eyes, she takes a long, shuddery breath and expels it as slowly as her two weeks of yoga classes from three years ago had taught her. Just as she was getting herself under control, a hand snatches the cup from her and she cries out in surprise.

Beside her, the man from the boiler room stares blankly, her cup held limply from his now clean fingers.

Jenny takes in a shuddering breath and repeats what's been explained to her, “Werewolves?”

He just shrugs.

She stares at him for a moment. Then a huff of a laugh breaks through. And another.

And before she knows it she’s giggling like a five year old, hanging on to the polished chair that’s sitting in the kitchen that belongs to a man whose name she doesn’t _know_ just so she doesn’t do something even more stupid than working overtime until four am—like _fall off_ the polished chair that’s sitting in the kitchen that belongs to a man whose name she doesn’t know.

He’s blinking now, slow and oh god he probably thought she was insane. Was she?

Jenny laughs again but cuts herself off, saying through heaving breaths, “I’m sorry…but I just—just—Werewolves.” She runs a hand through her hair. “And here I thought I would have my hands full with teaching Sophomores how to properly annotate text.”

“Oh, don’t worry. You will.”

Her head snaps up and Jenny finds that she’s gaping. “You made a joke!”

The man shifted from foot and foot, juggling the cup as if he didn’t know what to do with it. “No.”

Unable to summon her usual control, Jenny smiles and taunts in a sing-song voice, “Oh, yes you diiiid.” He narrows his eyes at her, but she’s too far gone now, the mix of sleep-deprivation and coffee working wonders on her restraint. “God, here I was thinking you were some _Adonis_ with perfect timing and it turns out—“

She shuts up quickly, reddening like she hadn’t since she was in high school herself. Please, _please_ , let the last five seconds have been a hallucination. Thankfully, or horribly depending on how you look at it, he seems to be equally embarrassed, suddenly turning around to place her cup in the sink.

Jenny stares for few moments more before saying finally, “I never said thanks.”

He looks around slowly, his intense glare almost pinning her to the chair. She takes a deep breath and continues, “So…thanks. For saving my, you know, life.” He nods, but says nothing else.

The complete awkwardness of the moment hits her all of a sudden and she’s laughing again, bursts of alternating terror and embarrassment. “Oh god, I’m _sorry_ , you must think I’m the strangest person you’ve ever met!”

At that, he manages a small twitch in the corner of his lips. “A little.”

“Oh, that’s not very heroic of you, making fun of the poor damsel,” Jenny says jokingly, her smile growing as she slouched further in the polished chair that’s sitting in the kitchen of a man whose name she doesn’t even know.

“Well, I’m not much of a hero, so…” he trails off suggestively, a hint of amusement in that inhuman stare, the skin around his eyes crinkling up.

Jenny looks at him, _really_ looks at him, and wishes she could find the panic and self-preservation to actually be scared of him. As it was she’d hardly protested when he calmly led her out of the dank boiler room, letting her press her face against his chest to sob in relief at not being dead and giving her a trashcan when she’d started to choke up everything in her stomach from the sheer stench of the blood. Sometime in between the two she’d passed out and woken up just as he had been carrying her out of from the car and into his apartment, where he’d promptly given her a cup of coffee, explained the situation, and waited until she’d pushed away the shock enough to start laughing like a maniac.

And see, now that she’s actually looking back at the events in the boiler room, she wishes she would feel a little more useless. Because she _had_ been useless, staring wide-eyed at the monsters before her brain could even catch up.

But Jenny still finds she can’t bring herself to _feel_ useless. What could she have really done? Screamed? Run away and begged someone to save her and risked triggering some sort of predator-chase instinct? Being killed was pretty much all she could have _really_ done in that kind of situation. And because of him, she hadn’t been.

Jenny would have felt more like a damsel in distress if at the exact moment he’d held his bloodied hand out for hers, she hadn’t gotten the feeling that she wasn’t the one being saved here.

Before she realizes it, she’s standing up and holding her hand out to the confused looking werewolf-Adonis before her, her lips moving without her command to say, “My name’s Jennifer. Jennifer Blake. But you can call me Jenny.” She tilts her head to the side and smiles. “Ms. Blake only if you want me to look over and grade your paper on Call of the Wild.”

He stays leaning back on the counter long enough for her to get antsy before abruptly shaking her hand and stating plainly, “Derek Hale.”

Together, their clasped hands feel like a promise.

.

.

.

Of all things, Jenny ends up falling asleep at the kitchen table.

Yawning, she lets her eyes flutter open enough to account for her whereabouts before letting them snap close with a muffled moan. Her hair feels like a rats nest of Oliver Twist-ian proportions and the groove of the wooden table is etched across her cheek. Oh god, her mouth tastes _awful_. Lifting her head, she groans, clumsily trying to account for all her limbs. The chair beneath her seems less sturdy than the night before and she barely takes two steps before nearly toppling over.

At the last moment a hand catches her, and Jenny goes spinning back into an all too solid and real chest. Eyes clenched shut, she refuses to face her likely rescuer, only moaning softly, “Please tell me you didn’t just save me again from splitting my head open on the floor.”

“I could lie, if you want.” His breath is hot against her neck and Jenny resists the urge to moan for another reason all entirely. It isn’t everyday she wakes up to the sound of a husky male voice, and in fact, it had been far too long since she’d woken up to anything male at all.

In her drowsy state, she relaxes, boneless against him and willing herself to fall back asleep and stay within this dream. For a moment, he freezes, the hard muscles of his chest—oh god he’d finally taken off that blood-stained rag and _praise be the shirtless men of this world_ —tensing up so wonderfully that Jenny couldn’t help from sighing and nuzzling closer to his almost impossible body heat.

Too soon, he steps back, leaving her cold and more wanting than she’s felt in years.

Still a little wobbly, as her knees also appeared to have regressed to her high-school crush days, Jenny staggers from side to side, yawning. “Oh god, what time is it?”

“Almost eight.”

Her eyes snap open. “What?”

The gorgeous man before her— _Derek_ , the actually helpful part of her brain reminds her—blinks and repeats, “Almost eight. Seven-forty, probably.”

“A.M?” Jenny cries back, heart pounding fast enough that it gives her that extra strength to rush to the coffee machine and start chugging down the first cup she sees. Which is, of course, the bitterly cold one she’d discarded from last night. She spits it out in the sink, gagging, just in time to hear his confounded answer.

“That’d probably be it.”

“Oh no, oh no,” she mumbles below her breath, searching around for her purse that she finds thrown haphazardly on the other side of the table, “I’m supposed to teach a class in thirty minutes!”

Derek’s somehow right in front of her again, his eyes narrowed and questioning. “You just got attacked by two werewolves.”

Jenny snaps back, pulling her ratty hair into the closest to a ponytail as she could get it, “And I have a room full of high school students waiting for me to teach them how to properly cite an article!”

Tugging her heels on, she barely avoids toppling over again, but his hands reach out once more to catch her around the waist. Breathing fast, Jenny manages, “Thanks. Again. I just,” she peers up at his strange eyes, pleading, “I just _really_ have to go teach.”

After what seemed like a lifetime of staring at his almost disbelieving green eyes, Jenny almost releases a sigh of relief when he nods, once, understanding her need for normalcy. He lets her go suddenly, announcing to no one in particular, “I’ll drive you.”

“Oh, thank you, but I should probably stop by my house first and grab a change of clothes,” Jenny says quickly, turning to walk towards what she presumes is the living room, “I wouldn’t anyone to get the wrong—“

“Well, _hello_.”

“Idea,” she finishes dumbly, staring in shock at the strange man at the foot of the stairs. There’s something almost hungry in his gaze, so Jenny can’t help but step back when his taunting lips draw out into a smile. There’s a low rumble behind her and suddenly Derek is in the room beside her.

The man’s eyes flew between her and Derek, his nostrils flaring for some odd reason. It’s a moment or two before he sighs and visibly droops. “So, not that.”

He casts a patronizing stare towards the now too obviously shirtless man beside her and says, “If I had known you were in the habit of letting strange women spend the night in your appartment, I would come over more often, Der-bear.”

Now she’s really not imagining it, Jenny realizes, because Derek is _actually_ growling, the sound low and foreboding and not really managing to have any visible effect on the man before them. For some reason, this makes her nervous and she curls unconsciously closer to Derek’s side, her hand brushing against his.

The strange man shoots Derek a grin and comes forward only to stop before her and bow with a flourish. “It’s lovely to meet the woman that has my dear nephew so enraptured. My name is Peter.” Straightening, he winks. “I look so forward to knowing you better.”

He holds out a hand for her to shake, but before she can even blink Derek’s own shoots out, lightning fast, to grab his uncle’s wrist and twist it until it made an audible crack. She gasps, but only a brief flicker of pain flashes across Peter’s face. “Or not.”

“Derek!” she cries out, more from shock than anything else, because Peter just pulls his hand free and rubs it like it was a particularly bad Indian burn, hissing.

Derek grunts, “He’ll heal.”

All at once, Jenny feels like she’s teaching first grade again. “That doesn’t mean you have free license to abuse anyone you please! Especially your uncle!”

He frowns, and to her surprise, Peter mimics the expression for a few moments, like even he was confused as to what she was talking about. Then he recovers and shoots Derek a taunting glare, “Yea, _nephew_ , respect your elders.”

She’s not finished yet. “And you,” Jenny rounds on Peter, narrowing her eyes and brandishing a finger like it was worth all of the claws he likely had in own hand, “If you keep baiting him like that, I see you less as an _elder_ and more like a first grade bully that should be sent to detention for quiet time!”

Peter’s face twists in repulsion. “You can’t send me to detention!” He turns to Derek, who looks faintly amused now that she’s moved on from him. “She can’t send me to detention!”

“Really?” she retorts, on a roll now, a headache moving in where there had only been bone-deep exhaustion. Jenny realizes that she is absolutely sick and tired of being scared shitless by supernatural creeps and maybe that’s what’s responsible for her next words. “I’ve had an empty detention room so far this year because unlike you, my _sixteen_ _year old students_ know not to test me, and I figure you could benefit from that.” He looks confused, so she clarifies. “Detention. In my classroom. For a week.”

“Hold on, lady,” Peter backtracks, something dangerous glinting in his eyes, “I ain’t one of your loser students and I am _not_ going to be sitting in a classroom when I have more _important_ things to do.”

Clenching her fists, Jenny grits out, “Two weeks.”

“But—“

She points her finger at his face dangerously, like she could and would use it to drill into his skull. “So help me, Mr. Hale, I will make it a month.”

Looking confused and slightly like a dog whose chain has been yanked back, Peter closes his mouth and says nothing else.

Good. Taking a deep breath, Jenny smiles and turns to Derek, who’s standing there with the closest thing to a smile she’s seen on him so far. “So. You said you would drive me?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as my tumblr can well attest to, the first thought that popped into my mind after that scene in the boiler room was 'now how can the boys fuck this up?'
> 
> (also omg loving the response to my interpretation of Ms. Blake)

Despite the time crunch, Jenny finds that she actually manages to make it to her class early enough to go over what papers she hadn’t been able to go over the night before. When she’d almost been killed by two rampaging killer werewolves.

Not quite the highlight of her arrival to the obviously-more-than-it-seems town of Beacon Hills, but on the whole Jenny feels like she was handling. In fact, she thought happily as she’d walked into her room, she might even finish in time to hand them all back before the week was up.

She thinks this up to the moment when she's ambushed by three students in her class that turn out to be members of the same pack as her attackers.

Scott’s brown eyes stare innocently back at her, the only anxiety present on him the subtle twitch of his fingers, which mimic that of the other boy beside him, Isaac, whose wide eyes look half scared and half contemplative. The boy she knew as Stilinski, or Stiles, looked almost bored.

“So, first things first. You are the lucky individual who happened to be present at the wrong place and time. Those creepy bite-y guys that almost ripped your throat out last night? Werewolves. Yea. The real Lon Chaney, Jr deal. You were, again, at the absolute _wrong_ place and time, which hey, I can only compliment you on your work effort—“

Wincing, Jenny cuts him off with an, “I know. Werewolves. Full moon. Bloodlust. I’ve been filled in.”

“You’ve been,” Stiles repeats dumbly, his face dropping in a strange sort of disappointment, “You’ve been filled in?” He throws his hands up. “Couldn’t someone have told me this before I skipped physics? God, my dad is gonna—“ he makes a face, which then quickly turns to confusion as the other shoe drops. “Wait, filled in? Who filled you in?”

Just as she’s about to answer, Isaac says quietly, “She smells like Derek.”

Three pairs of eyes start staring at her, two glowing.

Jenny finds herself more than little unnerved.

Resisting the urge to start hyperventilating, she forces the rising nausea down. These are her _students_. She takes a deep breath and starts, “Derek escorted me home after the incident and explained everything. I left this morning—“

“Morning,” Stiles repeats dumbly, his eyes narrowing in confusion. Seconds pass before the word processes and he proceeds to almost choke on his own spit. “Holy crap, you spent the _night_ with Derek!”

“Oh, _gross_.” Scott looks like he’s the one about to vomit. Isaac’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline, looking a little…impressed?

“No, no,” Jenny says quickly, straightening her desk with the sudden nervous energy shooting through her veins. “He was a perfect gentleman. Just gave me some coffee and let me drool _all_ over his kitchen table.” She tries for the joke, but as it turns out it’s the beginning of the sentence that has them more transfixed.

Scott stares at her like he was expecting her to burst into flames. Stiles mirrors him. Isaac looks even more contemplative. Jenny decides suddenly that he’s her favorite.

Defensive now, Jenny says, “He seemed sweet.”

Judging by how pale the boys suddenly turn, that was likely the wrong thing to say.

“Sweet?”

“Ahem, sorry, I think you might have the wrong person here ma’am, we were asking about the seven foot grumpy _killing_ machine—“

_“Sweet?”_

“About this tall,” Stiles raises his hand until he was on the tip of his toes, as if he was gesturing towards the ceiling, “with razor sharp claws and a penchant for, I don’t know, _ripping people’s throats out!”_

_“Sweet!”_

Isaac looks between the flabbergasted Stiles and the seemingly broken Scott, confused. Shrugging, he says lightly, “Well, I think it’s cute.”

Both boys suddenly stop talking and turn to their friend. Thanks to some deity Jenny makes a mental note to thank in sacrifice form, the bell rings at that exact moment.

.

.

.

All things considered, Jenny’s rather proud of herself for managing to make it through the entire class without passing out in front of the entire class. Sure, there were couple lapses here and there, where she would find her eyelids closing of their own volition, but nothing that screamed to the roomful of rather apathetic teenagers that their own teacher was having a harder time staying away than they were.

Poking herself with the sharp end of a bobby pin every time she felt the drowsiness start to creep in had helped. Also, the fact she had a free period after.

Jenny nearly collapses when she finally finds the teacher’s lounge, which some misguided fool had placed as far away from her own classroom as possible. She wastes some valuable seconds turning the coffee pot on for later consumption before conking out on what amounted to her second table-turned-pillow of the day.

But as her life seems to be rife with irony these days, when she opens her eyes later it’s not to the sight of rock hard muscles and a gorgeous man attacked to them, but to a clock on the wall telling her she’s already five minutes late to her next class and a roomful of teachers staring at her because she’s just woken up screaming.

“Uh, I have to,” Jenny manages dumbly, gathering her things and grabbing a quick, now _cold_ , cup of coffee before running out of the room as if the devil itself were chasing her.

And wonderfully enough, it still feels like a pair of them still is. Her pulse is rocketing and she’s certain she’s sweating harder than she has in years and she would take a quick break to catch her breath if it isn't for the simple fact that she's absolutely certain that if she so much as blinks then the yellow pinpricks of lights that keep popping up in the corner of her vision would reveal themselves and attack her.

By the time she reaches the classroom Jenny finds that she’s almost ten minutes late and breathing much too fast.

She needs to get ahold of herself.

Clenching her fists so hard that her nails leave crescent shaped gouges in the thin skin of her palm, Jenny tells herself that in this room are her students and they shouldn’t see her this unnerved. She’s responsible for them. She forces her heart to slow. _Students_. She takes a deep, shuddering breath. _Responsible_.

It’s with an elegant smile that she finally opens the door and welcomes the class, signaling with a look in her eyes for those slouching to sit up, those on their phone to put it away, and those already packing to leave to _take out their notebooks if they valued their lives_.

“Don’t take this as cue to come late to the rest of my classes,” Jenny says wryly, putting her bag down and pulling her the last night’s assignments as the kids traded dismayed looks, “I was held up by some…pressing matters. Concerning your upcoming papers.”

She realizes that this is the same class Scott, Stiles, and Isaac are in the moment Scott’s eyes meet hers and he looks so empathic that she almost thinks he can smell her lie. Her breath almost hitches but she refuses to let it, meeting his gaze solidly because honestly?

It had been the truth.

“So, the great novel _Heart of Darkness_ ,” Jenny begins, to the overall groaning of the class. She raises a brow and they quickly quiet. “I trust you’ve all done the required reading, of course?” Several of the students make a face and she makes a mental note to talk to them later as she claps her hands. “And so I’ll begin collecting your written responses.”

It had been her first time designing a curriculum for the semester and she’s not quite sure how it’ll work out. She had stayed late last night to review the previous curriculums and their general effectiveness, but as that entire fiasco had turned out, Jenny’s unsure if she would be visiting the records department for a while now. And on that topic, what school put their records and supplies in the _boiler room?_

Beacon Hills is a strange place, Jennifer Blake concludes as she walks down the rows, collecting papers. When she gets to Scott McCall she pauses, about to offer him an extension for obvious reasons, when he simply smiles smugly and hands her a typed paper complete with a bibliography of citations.

Jenny gives him an approving look and moves on. Heart of Darkness was a relatively short, if dense, novel and she doesn’t expect anyone to have much trouble reading the first three chapters. But when she reaches the almost nervous Isaac, she realizes that she may have more on her hands than just that.

He rushes to give her a crinkled piece of loose-leaf that bears a disturbing coincidence to the ripped edge in his notebook and she accepts it gingerly. Jenny scans over it for a few seconds and concludes that if she were to look over at Stiles’ paper, she would likely see some identical phrases. A lot of identical phrases. Probably with the words correctly spelled.

Leaning over, Jenny smiles and hands the paper back to Isaac as she says quietly, “I may be an English teacher, but even I understand when you’ve got more pressing issues. Get it in my mailbox by the end of the day and we’ll call it even.” Her voice was full of amusement as she added loudly to the room of students doubtless watching the exchange, “Contrary to popular belief, us teachers don’t _want_ you to fail.”

A voice sounds out behind her, “Lady, I think you and Mr. Harris might just come to blows on that.”

She turns to see Stiles, who’s shrugging lightly. She rolls her eyes and takes his paper neatly, hoping that this time he wouldn’t see it fit to expand it to nearly twenty papers detailing King Leopold II and the sadistic conqueror’s daddy issues.

At least without thoroughly analyzing how that in turn had influenced Leopold's treatment of his own daughters.

.

.

.

Jenny also figures that she could have gotten over whatever misunderstanding she’d had between her and the three boys if Derek hadn’t chosen for some odd reason to pick her up from school.

Her only clue is the suddenly appearance of his black Camaro in the parking lot outside her window, with him propped up lazily against it as he waved at her. The class erupts into wolf whistles that only stop when yet another bell begins to ring, signaling the end of the school day.

Only the barely trace of a flush present on her face, Jenny thanks the inherent flighty nature of teenagers yet again. There were a mere few who could resist the call of freedom. Packing away the last of her returned assignments, she leaves the classroom and hesitates a few moments in the teacher's bathroom to vainly adjust her skirt and makeup. As much as he knew about last night, Jenny doubts that letting him see her growing dark circles would be the best for either of them. By the time she's done it's far past the bell and she hurries down the hall and out the doors of the school with the last crowd, her eyes quickly scanning for Derek. 

And she finds him.

Right when he’s stalking angrily towards an apparently tense conversation between Stiles and another man Jenny recognizes as Mr. Harris, the physics teacher. She realizes something at the sight and a bolt of guilt shoots through her.

The same physics teacher whose class the boy had skipped in order to explain the prior night’s events to her.

Jenny picks up her pace, eager to intercept the argument before Derek got there. Somehow implicitly, she knew that it would not turn out well if he did. She’s close enough that she catches every bit of spite and vitriol Mr. Harris spits out as he says sarcastically, “Now, Mr. Stilinski, try and not act like the _idiot_ you are for a moment and remind me what I said last time about skipping my class. Do the words 'expulsion on the grounds of complete ineptitude' ring any bells?”

Stiles looks unaffected, but from far away she can catch his subtle flinch when the teacher leans in further.

Now that has got her attention.

“Mr. Harris!”

His head snaps up, shocked and just in time to see her absolutely incensed face glower back at him with all the sheer authority she could put in it. “What on earth do you think you are _doing?_ ”

He opens his mouth to respond, but she cuts him off, “In my entire career I have never heard a teacher be more condescending and rude towards a student!”

From the corner of her eye, Jenny sees Stiles’ mouth drop open, but her vision is turning too red for her process this entirely. A teacher talking like that to a student? In broad daylight, to top it off! Why on earth hadn’t the man been fired, or hell, arrested for _harassment_ already?

The shock wears away from Mr. Harris’ face quickly and he sneers then, “Ms. Blake, Stilinski is hardly the paradigm of a model student.”

A hand on her hips, Jenny doesn’t back down an inch. “I happen to know that he is, especially since he is averaging no less than an A on every single _one_ of his papers!” The physics teacher withers at this, but Jennifer finds that she is more than done with him. “And furthermore, how well a student is doing has nothing to do with how you treat him.” Her eyes narrow. “In fact, if Mr. Stilinksi is doing so poorly in your class, then I trust you've already offered some supplementary instruction, or assigned a tutor, or,” her tone turns positively glacial, “are you merely content with proving yourself the bigger man by _bullying around your own student.”_

Mr. Harris raises himself up now, his eyes full of hate and maybe—just _maybe_ —a hint of panic. “Stiles as proven himself less than attentionate on several occasions, and I feel no need to force a poor tutor on the likes of him. Now, excuse me, Ms. Blake,” he spits out her name like it was something particularly awful and suddenly Jenny knows that there were going to be more than a couple suspicious rumors floating around about her in the teacher’s lounge from now, “I have more important things to handle.”

He tries to shove past her to get to his car, shoulder roughly brushing hers and Jenny is too mad to notice the low rumbling growing beside her. She just grabs Mr. Harris by the arm and forces him to look at her as she says lowly, “Adrian, I may be new here but don’t you dare think I can be pushed the same way you do your students.” He rolls his eyes and tries to pull away, but she refuses to let him, jerking him back.

“In fact, I think that if this behavior doesn’t dramatically improve then I’ll be needing to schedule a private teacher’s conference between you and Mr. Stilinki’s parents,” he flinches then, but Jenny just ignores it and continues, “So I ask that you give your students the same respect you would give any inspiring mind. And if I hear about this behavior again—I won’t bother going to his parents first.”

By the time Jenny lets go of his arm, Mr. Harris is shaking and looking between her and the person standing next to her with a quickly paling face. Reality begins to drop back in and a deep breath of air clears her senses. Turning, Jenny realizes that Derek’s beside her, his face a careful arrangement of apathy that she would almost believe if she couldn’t see the sharp— _too_ sharp—nails peeking out from his clenched fists.

When she turns back to Mr. Harris, he’s already gone, his car peeling out from the parking lot. Stiles is standing in his place, his eyebrows furrowed as he stares at her.

Jenny realizes how the scene must have looked and she bites her lip. “Oh, Stiles, I’m sorry you had to see that, you must have been—“  
  
“Holy fuck, that was awesome,” he cuts her off with a dry rasp as his eyes bore into hers with something a little too much like hero worship for her tastes. She frowns. Just how often had the boy been put into that position? Had no one thought to defend him?

Well, one person had been attempting to. Her downturned lips began to stretch into a smile as she glances towards the leather-clad man by her side. He snorts a little when she shrugs in sheepishness, trying to apologize for getting there first.

Jenny lets out a little huff of laughter and says, “Sorry you had to see that. But what are you even doing here?” She winces at her lack of tact as he stares blankly back at her. “Sorry, I’m glad you are. Here. I mean.”

Derek stares at her for a couple moments as she winces and internally berates herself on acting like one of her own students. She’s about ready to make a run for it, especially when she catches sight of the Cheshire grin on Stiles’ face, when he finally shrugs and replies, “Thought I should check up on you. After what happened last night."

The last part seems to be tacked on a little too quickly, but Jenny ignores the resounding _aw_ that comes from Stiles’ direction. She laughs lightly instead, noting the almost too casual way Derek's eyes were avoiding hers.

Now that she looks back at it, she would have been completely okay with him pummeling that dreadful excuse for a teacher. But then Derek would have likely gotten into trouble, and she finds quite suddenly that she really doesn’t want that.

But it’s nice to know that when push came to shove, he was willing to do what was necessary.

Almost out of the blue, Jenny tilts her head to the side and says, “You’re a good alpha, Derek.”

He blinks, and she’s awfully certain that she’s thrown him. She smiles. It’s a good feeling.

Stiles’ eyes flicker between them fast, finally settling on Derek as he stared at the older man like he was the second coming of the antichrist. “Oh my god who the fuck even _are_ you?”

Eyes narrowing, Derek lets out a warning growl that Jenny barely catches. A grin spreading across her face from the petulant look on both boys faces, she ends up not restraining the small giggle that escapes her mouth. Both men turn to look at her.

Jenny stares back, eyes wide, as innocent as a fox in a chicken coup. Eager to change the subject, she asks quickly, turning to Derek, “I hope you didn’t wait long.”

He shrugs, walking towards the black Camaro. “It was fine.” He pauses a few moments, fishing out his keys, before asking awkwardly, “How was, uh, teaching?”

Behind her, Jenny is quite sure she can hear Stiles trying to repress chortles of laughter. She ignores him and rolls her eyes. “Do you have any idea how hard it is taking care of a bunch of hormonal teenagers with absolutely no respect for authority?”

“Tell me about it.” This he says with a particularly pointed look behind her, and Jenny turns to find Stiles whistling innocently behind her. There are no cars left in the parking lot, so she frowns.

“Do you need a ride, Stiles?”

He stares at her, a mischievous grin stretching across his cheeks. _“Suuuuuure!”_ He walks forward, throwing an arm over her shoulder and peering up at Derek as he did so. “I mean, we’re all friends here, _right?”_

“Friends?” she repeats, amused, before she turns to Derek, who’s already in the car and is staring quite fixedly at the steering wheel. “Uh, I don’t mean to pry, but you wouldn’t happen to have any non-sociopathic _adult_ friends, would you?”

Derek just stares blankly back at her and that’s answer enough.

“Right.”

She walks into the car, taking the front passenger seat and neatly buckling herself up. Stiles chooses to take the more acrobatic route, throwing himself in from the back door so that he lands stretched out on the backseat. He props his feet up on the chair and grins when Derek’s head turns back to look at him.

Jenny frowns, concerned, but no sooner had she leaned over to see the look on Derek’s face than he had turned around and started up the car. He hits the gas pedal a little more violently than necessary, but by the time they’re on the road they’ve thankfully slowed down.

A few minutes later, Stiles is up and chattering. “So, Ms. B. Tell us about yourself. Hobbies, likes, dislikes, possible turn-ons and turn-offs—“

They break suddenly and Stiles, who had not been wearing his seatbelt, falls forward into a crumpled heap in the backseat. Jenny gives an ‘oof’ as the seatbelt digs into her chest, the area stinging as she sat back. Shocked, she turns to Derek. “What happened?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Squirrel.”

She frowns. “Squirrel.”

“Yes,” Derek says, nodding, “A very loud and annoying _short_ brown squirrel.”

For a moment Jenny wonders how he could even hear the squirrel from the car, but decides to put it down to some werewolf power.

From the back, Stiles groans, “Aw, c’mon man, I’m only trying to help, be the wind beneath your wings—“

Derek starts the car again, ignoring the cry from the back. Jenny raises a brow, but doesn’t comment.

A few minutes later, as they’re turning down onto her street, he suddenly asks, “You’re an English teacher, right?”

Eager for some conversation to break the sudden silence, Jenny jumps to answer, “Yes! I mean, yes, I am.”

Parking neatly, Derek hesitates for a second before saying slowly, “There’s a bookstore that just opened up downtown, do you want to—“

“I love books!” she cuts off, grinning so hard her cheeks begin to hurt a little. “I’d love to take a look around with you.”

Derek manages a half-smile at that, an expression that is definitely awkward and trying too hard, but nonetheless manages to come off to her as perfectly charming.

At least until Stiles begins to hum the theme of _Beauty and the Beast_ from the backseat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay in all honestly there's some really sadistic part of me that contemplate the relationship between Derek and Blake and suddenly just really wanted to see the big bad alpha flounder
> 
> aka not so subtle hint that Derek ain't getting that date just yet


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so i'm trying to figure out jennifer's characterization in this, and figured that i'd borrow more from her personality in class (where's she certain and in control and not (usually) freaked out of her mind by a hot werewolf). cause in my head the reason she was so freaked during her conversation with derek was cause he was being a serious creeper and dude really stop sneaking up on her unless you're somehow profiting from her therapist bills
> 
> okay so basically this au is a question in what would happen if derek actually took the time to explain this werewolf shit to ms. blake. so she's not as nervous? but still rather nervous and ramble-y cause that shit's fun. all laughs and giggles from here on out man
> 
> except for this chapter sorry not sorry it's jennifer's fault for assuming that Peter might be a good person and on a side note after writing their banter for so long i think i ship it????
> 
> (also here's where the timeline gets screwy sigh this au thing is hard)
> 
> (but if you guys could help that'd be lovely i mean it)

Jennifer Blake doesn’t consider herself a particularly forgetful person, but when the apparently used-to-be-dead Peter Hale struts into her classroom  _through the window_  after the last bell, her mind blanks out so quickly it's a wonder she doesn't gape at the sight.

“So,” he begins, sitting in the first desk in the front and flashing her a winsome grin, “Detention. How kinky is this next half-hour gonna get?”

Taking a deep breath, Jenny casually puts away the concealer she had been applying in preparation for her meeting with Derek at the bookstore. Her dark circles were taking on a life of their own at this point. She hadn’t slept much last night. Or the night before, for that matter.  

The last thing she needs to be dealing with this—she thinks nasty thoughts as she sees him get a little too comfortable—but she had to do what she had to do. She sends a quick text to Derek, who had left her his number since the night of the incident, telling him that his uncle was in her classroom and that she couldn’t make it to their…meeting. Just a meeting. Between friends. At the bookstore.

Then so, thinking of murder, Jenny smiles says, “Detention lasts an  _hour_. Usually I’d just have students catch up on their homework—“

“Don’t have any,” he interrupts with a smug curl of his lips, feet now completely propped up on the chair in front of him.

She stares blankly back at him, still smiling politely. “Then I supposed in your unique case I’ll just have to assign some.”

Peter looks as if he’s just eaten a particularly sour lemon.  _“Joy.”_

Sighing, she goes through the options, “In class we just finished reviewing Heart of Darkness by—“

He cuts in with, “Imperialist bullshit. Next.”

Jenny purses her lips and refuses to take his bait. Peter shrugs at the dark look on her face, looking alarmingly blaise about the situation. Her mind is whirling with thoughts of wrapping her hands around his throat and squeezing until he popped. She’d like to tell him to get the hell out of her classroom, but she knows that he’s only waiting for her to give up and yell at him to leave and never come back.

So she just straightens in her chair and goes straight to the point, “Is there a reason why you don’t like me, Mr. Hale?”

“Well, Ms. Blake,” Peter begins, his mouth a smirk, and folding his hands in a mockery of hers, “If that is your real name. I don’t care much for women who happen to be in the right place at the right time.”

She raises a brow. “I was told yesterday that I was, in fact, in ‘ _absolutely_  the wrong place at the wrong time’. Along with a compliment of my work effort.”

He looks almost amused at her bitter turn of words, seeming to recognize them. “Stilinski is a character, huh? But I’m talking more about your arrival to the,” Peter gestures ironically to the still cracked and bloodied corners of the windows, “positively  _scenic_  town of Beacon Hills.”

“They gave me a job,” Jenny says simply, refusing to go into detail. She gets the feeling that this detention was likely to become less a punishment for him than for her. And her therapist had taken all that time to warn her away from stressful situations.

“Now, in any other case I would believe that without question.” He starts tapping deliberately on the table, his fingernails now sharp claws that make her shudder more than she should. “But, like I said, Beacon Hills is a special place. Full of strange things and even…stranger people.”

Quite suddenly, Jenny gets it. “This is about Derek.” He smiles thinly in agreement.

“My nephew hardly has the best track record with women,” Peter says dryly, his eyes roaming over her body like he was scanning for weapons, “Especially those with a teaching license.”

Now that throws her for a loop. Jenny frowns, wondering what he’s talking about, but rather than going on, he simply sighs and leans back in the chair. “And when you just pop up in his apartment and decide to give me detention—which, might I add, quite conveniently insures that I’m away from my nephew for a set period of time every time,” he gives her a patronizing look, “You can imagine how I’d start to worry.”

His entire demeanor screams complete apathy, but Jenny realizes something else quite suddenly that has her relaxing and giving him a small grin. He looks a little confused, his eyes narrowing in suspicion as she struggled to keep a straight face.

“You’re worried, actually worried,” she says with a laugh breaking through, “That I’d hurt him.” She covers her mouth a little to hold back the incoming giggles. “You’re giving me the  _‘hurt-my-nephew-and-I’ll-make-you-pay’_ talk.”

Something in his perfect arrangement of a face falls away and Peter is left staring at her, but Jenny feels less under the microscope and more assured.

At least Peter Hale wasn’t a complete sociopath, if he could think about Derek like that. In the smallest way. Maybe? Or he could be playing her.

“I’d never hurt Derek,” Jenny says quite honestly, figuring she’d get it out in the open while she can. “I consider him a friend. And I would consider  _you_  one as well if you wouldn’t try so hard to make me hate you.”

Peter keeps looking at her, deadly silent, almost like he was waiting for something. Somehow, Jenny gets the idea that her thought earlier about werewolves being able to tell lies apart from the truth has more substance behind it than she’d originally thought.

When he didn’t get what he was looking for she can see him visibly exhale before grinning. “So you just wanna sleep with him, huh?”

Out of all the things he’s said this afternoon, that’s the only one she’s prepared to respond to. Schooling her features in complete obedience, Jenny says simply, “That’s none of your business.” She hopes withholding the truth doesn’t count as a lie.

She  _really_  hopes withholding the truth doesn't count as a lie.

Smirking, Peter looks about to continue on this vein of inquiry, but she quite suddenly takes the initiative to glance quite conspicuously towards the clock on the wall. She says, “I think it’s about time for you to start your assignment, Mr. Hale.”

He holds out his wrists to her. “Oh, just take me away and throw away the key,” Peter says immediately, not even trying to hide his grin, “I’ve been _such_ a  _bad_  boy.”

Jenny gets up and hands him her copy of Heart of Darkness, ignoring the way he rolls his eyes at the sight of it. “Read through it once and write a page of analysis on the fog scene, making sure to talk about the paradoxical nature of the fog as well its influence on the collective self-identity of the crew."

Peter blinks, holding the book out as if it were a particularly filthy piece of trash.

She stands there, waiting for him to either put up a fight or leave the damn classroom. She’s not sure when it happens, but she blinks for a second too long and suddenly he's directly in front of her.

Jenny lets out a small yelp of surprise, but holds her ground, trying to convince herself that there was nothing to be afraid of.

His eyes start growing yellow.

She purses her lips together to keep from screaming.

Judging by the smug grin on his face, Peter knows exactly what he was doing.

“We could have an…exchange,” he purrs, managing to make the word sound like both a threat and perfectly dirty.

Jenny isn’t moved. If all these years of teaching public school have taught her anything, it was that a bully was only as powerful as the response they received. But that doesn’t account or supernatural bullies bearing a stronger-than-normal resemblance to creatures that nearly mauled you less than a day ago and so when Peter’s eyes flash, Jenny can’t help the way a sudden burst of panic lances through her.

Her chest feels too tight now. Beating out of control as images of fangs and yellow eyes swerve in and out of her vision, her heart seems to be competing with her lungs for space and out of it, she’s the one losing.

As if he can tell, Peter steps back to give her space. His face is a mask of apathy, but the interest in his eyes sends another shiver of repulsion rolling through her body.

Jenny is rethinking her offer of friendship. If this was how he acted conciliatory, she doesn’t want any part of it. Or him.

He clicks his tongue like he knows what she’s thinking. “Now, don’t be like that.” His hand goes up to touch her face and she recoils back so fast her hip strikes the edge of the desk at a bad angle.

Jenny finds that she’s biting her lip now to keep from screaming, holding herself up with one hand on the desk and the other cradling her throbbing side. He doesn’t move. It’s the little things.

Peter stares at her for a moment before heaving a long, overdone sigh. “Don’t be so overdramatic.”

He should talk. Jenny doesn’t say a word back, her eyes flickering back and forth from him and the door.

“By exchange, I meant this,” he says lightly, stepping to the side by a fraction and effectively cutting off her escape. Jenny sucks in a ragged breath, trying to grab a pointer from behind her back. Maybe staking worked on vampires and werewolves?

He tries to hand her a folded up newspaper, but she won’t touch it and so he’s forced to leave it hanging in the air. Peter sighs again, even  _more_  dramatic. “It’s for your own benefit too.  Don’t you want to know what happened to Derek’s last girlfriend?”

Jenny eyes him suspicious, the wooden pointed gripped solidly behind her back. The newspaper looks inconspicuous, but who knew. There was a fully grown werewolf standing right in front of her. She’d had to suspend a boy yesterday for riding a motorcycle into the damn hallway.  _Isaac_   _Lahey_ had been given detention for apparently beating up that same student.

The damn newspaper could explode and Jennifer Blake wouldn’t be the tiniest bit surprised.

But Peter isn’t moving. Something gives her the idea that he won’t be until she accept his offering. Her mouth finally creaks open and begins to ask, “Why would you give me information? What’s in it for you?”

“I like you,” he replies easily, apparently as good a liar as he was an intimidator.

Her glare is cold. “I thought my intentions towards your nephew worried you?"

"Hey, I was trying to figure out what shade of grey you are." Peter shrugs, but his casual air a little too forced. Jenny frowns.

"That's a terrible book."

Peter says nothing back at that, but his eyes roll skyward and don't return for a while. He's still holding out the stupid newspaper.

Her eyes still narrowed in suspicion, Jenny reaches out and takes it from him, noticing that it’s folded on a specific page already. It’s from a while back, so it’s not that recent, but the headline certainly captures attention—“Local Woman Found Dead: Suspected Serial Killer”. She scans the paper for a few seconds, making sure to keep her other hand wrapped firmly around the pointer and Peter in her peripheral vision. The name pops out at her. Argent? Wasn’t that one of her students’ last names?

She only has enough time to ponder this a few moments before a feral dog leaps in through the open window.

“Oh my--"

“Oh come on, how did you get here so fast?” Peter whines, throwing up his hands and taking a few safe steps back from her. Jenny looks at him at confusion before turning back to the windowpane and the familiar alpha standing under it. She gives a slight start at the change. No one notices.

The look on Derek’s face is nothing less than furious. “I told you to stay away.”

“Yes,” Peter says smugly, “From Cora. Me and the teacher here,” he slides up to her and lightly places a hand on her shoulder, making her shudder, “had a date.”

“For detention,” Jenny hisses, not liking the way he was trying to make this seem.

If Derek clenches his jaw any more, she’s rather sure his teeth would end up shattering. Still glaring, Jenny brushes off Peter’s touch and takes a step to the left.

“I don’t see what the problem here is,” Peter continues, willfully ignorant to the murderous intent gathering around him. “I had detention and I came to detention. I think I should be getting thanked right about now. Don't you think I should be getting thanked right now?"

Derek takes a step forward, claws extended, but Jenny puts a hand on his arm and faces Peter herself. She only allows herself a couple speechless seconds to marvel at the thick cord of muscle in his bicep. Was this a thing with werewolves, or just him?

Peter's grinning again, that patronizing interest still gleaming in his eyes, and Jenny straightens rather than shoot him a dirty look. Ignoring her dry mouth, she coughs and says pleasantly, “Mr. Hale, today in no way counted as your first day of detention. This was a meeting between acquaintances. Your two weeks of detention start tomorrow. Remember to bring your homework.”

The look on Peter’s face almost makes up for everything that’s happened to her life in the last couple days.

When she looks back at Derek, he’s looking almost pleased with the turn of events. Good. Jenny knows she can handle her own, if given the chance. Snarling manic werewolves are just hardly a chance, that's all. 

Peter’s eyes flick over to Derek as well. “You could get me out of it. Just tell me I can’t come and see the lovely,” she shudders against as he tries to lay a hand on her shoulder, sidestepping neatly as he gave her a disgruntled look, “Ms. Blake again and I’ll listen.”

Wondering if there’s something about the pack dynamic she’s missing, Jenny watches Derek stare Peter down and enunciate clearly, “No.”

“Aw, c’mon!  _Why?”_

Derek blinks and responds honestly, “Because I like seeing you struggle.”

Jenny really, really wants to laugh a little at the look on Peter’s face, but she got the feeling that if she did, it’d only make the strange tension worse.

“Hey, guys, we’ve got a situation— _woah_.”

Another figure runs into the room, nearly colliding with Derek. Thankfully, he moves at the last possible moment, also pulling her back and out of the way. Not so thankfully, he also happens to lay a hand on her hip, which is still throbbing painfully. She hisses and jerks away, slamming her back against the black chalkboard.

Well, her shirt’s now ruined, Jenny thinks as she tries to blink stinging tears from her eyes. A growl sounds out near her and she flinches again, folding her arms and tucking him against herself, trying to curl up as small as she can. The sound stops and gives way to silence.

“Sorry, sorry, I just hit myself a little earlier,” she says as she forcibly pries her eyes open, resisting all her instincts to run as finds Derek staring evenly, Peter tilting his head to the side in confusion at her not ratting him out, and Scott McCall looking at her with eyes wide with confusion. “It’s fine. Sorry.”

When they don’t move, Jenny purses her lips and sits down at her desk, letting the familiarity of the position sweep over her. She quickly stuffs the newspaper in her purse, trying to force her heartbeat back to normal. There was nothing to be afraid of here. Nothing. She’s saved from having to come up with a way to hide her treacherous racing heart from a roomful of werewolves who could probably hear it by a rush of people entering the room.

“Guys, I’m serious, one of these days I’m gonna have you all chipped so I can actually find you.”

“Wouldn’t their body just reject the chip? Like with bullets?”

Jenny recognizes Stiles staring down another girl who can vaguely remember was named Lydia and was the only one in class doing better than him.

“Not if I burn it in.”

Blinking inquisitively, Jenny looks around to find Scott looking sheepish and Derek two seconds away from throwing his hands up and declaring that he was so done with this shit. Or at least, that was the general impression she got? In all honestly, Jenny is still trying to figure out how Lydia fits into the werewolf picture.

Oblivious to the tension, Stiles grins and declares, “The virgin sacrifices are officially just regular sacrifices, so you know what that means?” He points his thumbs at himself. “I’m no longer on the menu to be sacrificed!”

Scott looks a little embarrassed. “But people are still being sacrificed, right?”

“Uh, well, I guess,” Stiles starts to say, his face falling as he realized the impropriety of his excitement. “People are still dying, yeah, of course.” He puts on a straight face and stuffs his hands in his pockets, looking decidedly somber now.

Lydia rolls her eyes dramatically and looks about to say something before noticing Peter. Then she quite noticeably takes a step back. Stiles follows her eyes and his own grew hard as he places himself in front of her, presumably shielding her from a threat.

“Hello all,” Peter sighs, waving a hand. “How have you been doing?”

“Better. Less hallucinations,” Lydia says quietly, her voice taunt and ready to snap.

Jenny looks between her and the suddenly quieter Peter, her eyes narrowed again in suspicion as she recognized the all too familiar symptoms of being in Peter Hale's presence for too long. “Not her  _too_.”

Stiles and Lydia turn to her suddenly, as if just realizing she was there. She’s too busy frowning. “I think that deserves another week of detention,” Jenny peers over at Lydia, “Unless you want to extend it.”

Lydia just looks at her like the goddess Athena just sprung fully formed from her forehead. And while Jenny feels like her headache has almost gotten that bad, it’s not quite there yet.

Peter groans aloud.

Stiles is the first to register what she said, judging by the huge grin on his face. “Oh, you  _didn’t_.”

Jenny tries to look innocent. “I didn’t what?”

Looking between her and Stiles, Scott looks confused, repeating, “Didn’t what?”

Apparently not hearing his best friend, Stiles turns to Peter and smirks. “I’d say I feel sorry for you but dude, that’s a total, total lie. So,” he takes a step back when Peter’s eyes start to narrow, but still doesn't drop his grin, “Have fun in detention! Welcome to the hell you made my life ever since you came here and started to play rabid wolf bingo!”

Jenny feels that she should really be telling Stiles to tone down the enthusiasm, but his grin is downright infectious and she’s smiling along before she knows it. When Peter notices it, he frowns and says, “You shouldn’t be enjoying this. It's unprofessional."

“Even I’m enjoying this,” Derek cuts in, before she can retort that she’d enjoy it more if he actually came  _in_  with the homework tomorrow.

Peter says nothing further, looking, again, like a dog whose chain has been yanked a little too hard.

Jenny's beginning to feel a little bad, actually.

Stiles is off rambling to the shell-shocked Scott. “No, but honestly, dude. We have your mom in the hospital, Allison with the hunters, and her,” he suddenly jabs a thumb in her direction and Jenny is sad to say that she cringes at the sudden movement, “at the high school.” He opens his arms. “All we need is for Lydia to run for Mayor and we’ll literally rule Beacon Hills.”

Derek snorts, loudly.

Peter frowns. “Why don’t I run for—“

“No, please.”

“Hell no.”

“ _Fuck_  no.”

“Noooooo way, man.”

“I would rather cut off all my hair and run naked into a cackle of bloodthirsty female hyenas.”

Everybody turns to face Lydia. She blinks. “What?”

Thankfully, the moment is cut short by Peter throwing up his hands and declaring, “That’s it. I can tell when I’m not wanted.”

“Then why did you come back from the dead,” Derek deadpans, folding his arms and taking a stance in front of her desk. Jenny recognizes the attempt at hiding her and feels annoyed. She honestly doesn’t need this.

As if he were reading her thoughts, which is a very disturbing thought and Jenny wishes she hadn’t had it, Peter is suddenly beside the desk and smiling his most open smile. She rears back in surprise. And almost topples out of the chair. Just as she’s thinking she can’t be any more embarrassed, he reaches out to try and hold her still. Oh, no.

Using one hand to stabilize herself on the solid desk and remembering the wooden pointer in her other, Jenny lets out a cry and smacks Peter across the knuckles with the stick. He steps back, looking affronted as she breathes hard and tries to calm herself down, huffing, “Not a step closer, Mr. Hale.”

He looks shocked.

There’s a loud cackling coming from behind her now and Jenny resists the urge to sternly turn around and tell Stiles that it’s rude to laugh at other people pain. She doesn’t really know how Peter will respond to this, whether it be chuckling lowly to himself or ripping her damn throat out. She’s saved from finding out by blinking too slow again and watching the spot that he was standing in become empty. A cold breeze rushes in through the open window.

“Did you just—“Scott starts, his mouth a little open. Lydia just raises her eyebrows and nods her head a little. Stiles is still laughing. Jenny is beginning to think it can’t be good for the boy.

A hand covers hers and for some reason she knows exactly whose it is and doesn’t question its presence, just slowly lacing their fingers together as she tries to calm down. Derek’s probably standing next to her beside the chair, but Jenny doesn’t feel like lifting her head and finding out. The day had been stressful, far more than she had planned. Of all things, he’s a calming presence.

From the window, Lydia frowns. “This is freaky.” She turns to Scott, who’s sporting a similar look of shock. “Tell me this is freaky.”

Stiles just has a lopsided grin plastered on his face as he asks innocently, “So have you guys had that date yet?”

Jenny nearly jumps from her seat at the reminder there was underage students in the room. She peers up at Derek. “Um, I sent you,” she starts, pulling her hand away to start nervously wringing it, “a text. Telling you I couldn’t make it, so how did you…?”

He stares at his hand for a moment, looking a little irritated, before stuffing both in his pockets and shrugging. “All you said was that Peter was there and you couldn’t make it. I thought he had his claws around his throat and was making you type it out.”

Smiling, Jenny laughs a little at the joke before realizing that no one else is. Even Stiles has ducked his head and was rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. Her face falls and she whispers, “He’d actually do that?”

Lydia meets her stare head on, something dangerous ticking in her jaw. Scott seems to have adopted an aura of strange authority, as if he were a general commanding his troops about. Jenny wonders how a boy who was usually so open could look so dangerous.

“He won’t,” Derek finally answers plainly, something dark flashing in his eyes and she feels horrible about it, she really does, especially when he was trying to be so nice, but Jenny can’t help but flinch away so hard she grazes her hip on the chair. Images of yellow eyes and grotesque snarls flit through her skull as her stomach rolls and bobs with nausea. 

“Sorry—“ she grits out, clenching the pointer in her hand so hard her knuckles turn white. Her side throbs in anger and she hates it but she can feel herself start to get overwhelmed, the sheer impossibility of the situation hitting her at that moment. God, she had enough issues to deal with. She really does. Her therapist really had advised her against these stressful situations.

"Hello and welcome to Beacon Hills, Ms. Blake," Lydia says lowly, making it sound almost like a threat. "Where charming middle-aged men are sociopathic killers, celtic sacrifices are the norm, and hot freshman twins are actually murderous alpha werewolves."

It takes a moment for Jenny to process this. When she does, her head snaps up to see Lydia barely even trying to hide her glare towards Stiles. "Wait, the twins?' Ethan and Aiden?" she repeats, not sure if she heard things correctly.

Lydia stares for a moment before rolling her eyes up to the ceiling and sticking them there, not unlike Peter had done. "Oh please tell me you didn't neglect to tell her that two of her students are evil homicidal wolf men."

Before Stiles can turn his affronted look into actual words and Derek can cut in with yet another 'don't worry about it', Jenny continues slowly, her voice thin and strained, "You mean to say that I just  _suspended_  a crazy...werewolf,  _alpha_ werewolf?" 

Derek curses suddenly, just as Stiles' mouth opens and closes rapidly and Scott winces, looking guilty. 

Lydia says simply, "Well, that's unpleasant."

And now she has to worry about being ripping apart by a killer werewolf. Jenny purses her lips. Derek looks pained now, ready to say something that would make it all right or at least try to in his own strange way. She's finds suddenly that she doesn't want that. Peering up at him, she asks, "Why didn't you tell me?"

He squirms a little, looking put on the spot. "You didn't need to know."

"I didn't," Jenny says, her voice starting to rise in terror, "I didn't need to  _know?_  I'm their teacher, Derek, I--"

Before she can finish, there’s a knock on the door.

.

.

.

What—

Jenny looks back at Derek, but he’s gone. And the knob is already turning and two men are walking in.

She is about ready to tell someone to lock the damn door already and where was the Janitor and was  _he_  dead too? But then she recognizes the police uniform the two men are wearing. She stands, quickly.

One of the officers stops as he looks around the room. He frowns when he sees Stiles, who appeared to be attempting to hide behind Scott. Unsuccessfully. Then he turns back to her and his face looks almost sad. “Jennifer Blake?”

She nods twice in quick succession, pushing a loose hair over her ear. “Did you,” Jenny says as calmly as she can manage, “want anything, officer?”

“It’s Sheriff Stilinkski actually,” he corrects, casting another annoyed look at the still cowering Stiles. Jenny wonders if this has anything to do with Mr. Harris. Had he filed charges? Was she going to be asked as a witness for the harassment claim?

The Sheriff looks pained as he says, “We need to ask you some questions. Back at the precinct.”

There's am moment of silence before Stiles makes himself known. “Dad, what are you  _doing?”_

The officer next to him scowls and makes a show of adjusting his belt. Vaguely, in between clenching the pointer in her hands tighter and tighter, Jenny wonders if he’s new. He has the new look. Did she have the new look? The Sheriff pauses and ultimately chooses to ignore the outburst.

His voice is low. “Mr. Harris has been found. Murdered,” he clarifies when she gives him a blank look. “The latest in a string of killings dating back to around,” Jenny knows the end of this sentence and only blinks owlishly when he sighs, “when you came to Beacon Hills.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Lydia chirps, stepping forward, her arms folded in a stance that screamed authority. Jenny's a little jealous. “You can’t take her into custody on circumstantial evidence like that. It’s bad police work.”

Stiles shoots her a dirty look before realizing she’s doing a good thing and joining in with a, “Yea! Plenty of people moved here this semester.” He stands up straighter. “She hasn’t even talked to Mr. Har…”

His face grows pale.

Jenny wrings her hands and hopes she’s not turning that white. It’d be bad for a mugshot, right? It was going to be her first one too and she really wants to get it right.

Sheriff Stilinkski continues, looking her over like he didn’t want to do this, “You were seen arguing with Adrian Harris yesterday, after class. Witnesses said it got physical. You understand that we  _have_  to follow up on all leads, right?”

This time it’s Scott, who states simply, his face a mask of control, “The witnesses wouldn’t happen to be a pair of twins, would they?”

The Sheriff doesn’t answer. Stiles looks fit to pop. “Dad, you can’t actually be thinking of doing this. She was sticking up for me, okay! She’s not a serial killer, I mean, seriously, just  _look_  at her.”

Jenny doesn’t know exactly what they’re looking at, but Sheriff Stilinkski’s eyes soften when they take her in. It almost makes up for what he says next.

“And added with your history…” he trails off, looking almost sad again as she holds herself tighter, shrinking before all their collective gazes. “We’ve already been to see your therapist’s office. They directed me here.”

Stiles speaks up, his voice hollow, “Wait, what?”

“If you don’t come with us, we’ll have to actually take you into custody. And escort you back to the station in handcuffs,” Sheriff Stilinkski explains, shooting an apologetic look at the kids behind her.

They all begin speaking at once, Stiles rambling excuses, Lydia shooting pointed insults, and Scott trying to make some sense of the nonsense by adding something about how it was his fault.

Jenny decides that she’s heard enough.

She turns to Lydia, holding out her pointed like a sword. "You mistakenly cited all the references in your paper in the wrong format." The girl reels back, looking affronted and Jenny quickly extinguishes the spark of guilt that rises. She points towards Stiles. "You went  _far_  over the word limit, and you," Jenny looks finally towards Scott, "need to work on reading the text closer."

Jenny slaps the pointer in her other hand and takes a strange satisfaction in the way they all jumped to attention. They were all small white lies—their papers had been a joy to read. But that wasn't the point here. "It's still a school night and you all still need to finish your homework. This," she looks towards the stunned officer and one Sheriff Stilinski's, who's giving her a small smile, "is not your concern. You're all still kids. You shouldn't have to worry about this kind of thing."

“I keep telling him that— “the sheriff begins, shooting Stiles a frustrated look that Jenny doesn’t catch.

She's all for giving credit where credit was due, but they shouldn't have to become involved with something as grisly as this if there were actual adults that could handle it. And seeing as how she now falls under the category of 'adults who could', Jenny feels that she should at least take a little responsibility for their wellbeing.

Although she doesn't feel much like an adult, with her rather breakable wooden pointer and bruised side. She feels a little scared actually.

The pitying look Scott gives her as she refuses to meet his undoubtedly knowing gaze doesn't help. Even if his werewolf senses could pick up her anxiety, Jenny is of the mind that even if kids could tell you were lying, it was more important that you just kept acting like a adult than admit you were just as freaked as they were. But oh, that doesn't mean that she's letting Derek off even a little bit for running when the going got rough. Did he actually just expect these kids to clean up the mess?

Trying to let the frustration override her rising hysteria, Jenny turns to the Sheriff and his officer. "It's fine. I'll go quietly."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no guys it's fine she'll just explain that there was no way she could have killed that girl in the park she was rooting through office supplies in the boiler room seriously just ask the two rampaging werewolves that almost....oh
> 
> Next up: Derek arrives at Jenny's door with a bouquet of wolfs-bane and a dismembered limb. rOMANCE

**Author's Note:**

> I have another three parts written so far that I'm gonna put up before then next episode (and watch all my headcanons fall apart sigh) so yea, tell me how you're feeling so far cause damn, i'm a lot nervous about writing this much for a character that's barely gotten any screen time


End file.
